Pulling the ears off a Gundark…

I had quite an interesting conversation with a couple of guildies and friends on Teamspeak, the topic… was Bioware and its reputation and where the company is going.

One of the most interesting things about this topic is the fact that Bioware seems to have a ‘running joke’ reputation. And every time that Bioware puts out an update to fix something they break something else. As a guildie said, ‘one step forward, and three steps back’. I mean how bad is that, that we as players of this game see it that way.

With as much complaining that we do, we always seem to forget one of the most important thing as to why we complain. And that is the fact with most of the players are comparing SWToR to other MMO’s, i.e. this MMO has this and that MMO has that and we want this done and more blah blah. Have you ever notice people comparing MMO’s during a stream or someone saying that the game is dead. In my opinion the game is far from being dead, but remember some games aren’t for everyone. I think you’ll agree with that, like myself, I’m not much of a first person shooter. But that just me, I’m still loving SWToR.

During the conversation with my guildies, we started comparing the SWToR forums to a business and it customers. Whether you go into a store and have bad experience or a great experience. But it all stems from our experience with another game. Everyone can attest to this, it doesn’t matter whether you buy online or walk into a retail store. Experience is experience.

But people forget that this is Bioware’s first MMO, and people knew that but over time maybe, just maybe we are lead to believe that Bioware dropped the ball somewhere down the line. But that might not be the case because of the fact we players feel as though we should be entitled to what we pay for. Now let’s set the PvP aspect aside for now because there’s a bigger picture here.

Now those who have worked a retail job understand having ‘that horrible’ customer, that no matter what you do, you can’t, you won’t make that customer happy no matter what. And the other ‘nothing can go wrong, I want to buy everything’ customer. The question is which one are you? Working a customer service job gives you an idea of both sides of the fence. Either for the better, or you just give a Banthas poodoo about it.

Bioware is still going through growing pains, I mean imagine how much Eric Musco has to go through and deal with. My guildie said that he wouldn’t want Eric Musco’s job even he were to get double or triple his pay. Now most companies would hire more people to be added to the team, but that might not be allowed from EA. Now remember every company wants to make a profit with as little overhead cost as possible. We as customers expect so much from Bioware that we don’t take into account how much maybe Biowares hands could be tied by EA saying no to adding more positions or allowing for a bigger budget for X, Y, and Z.

Now could it be that the players/customer base may be the toxicity of the game? Personally, I’m loving the game, yeah okay there are issues that need to be fix. No question about that but maybe we need to give Bioware a little slack. We all want a polished game, if things are fixed whether it be PvE or PvP a lot of the customers will have a better experience. Bioware is trying. With Operation Victory cancelled and Bioware partnering up with ESL, Bioware wants to head in the right direction. But the timeframe Bioware gave us was too short, they could’ve announced it with more time given so that players had time to practice. Players wouldn’t mind waiting for something if it’s all fix and patched up. For example, the Gree event, once it was here everyone was doing the Gree event, and we all were happy about it. But once we feel as though we’re let down we start getting our pitchforks and forcepikes and start blaming Bioware and complaining. Bioware takes the brunt of our backlash and we start to blow up the forums and social media outlets. Question is, do you want broken content or polished/fixed content?

With the 3.0 update, Bioware was able to take control a bit more of the direction of the game and where they wanted to take it. Bioware has to change it up a bit, to make progress. The new content is fun, Ravagers and Temple of Sacrifice. But I did expect a little bit more with the class stories.

I would personally love to see more new players/subs join swtor. It would benefit everyone.

Nice post, Liu! I personally have never played another MMO ever, so SWTOR is all I have to compare anything to. And it’s Star Wars. Granted I probably wouldn’t play if it were another genre, but I am an SW fanatic to the point that I was wearing a Darth Vader tee shirt while playing tonight. The biggest thing to remember is that people generally don’t say anything when things are going well but get up in arms when something doesn’t go their way. Sure, I get frustrated with content-I haven’t stepped back into Directive 7 since the post I did by the same name. But that doesn’t mean that I need to ream Bioware for it. I love the game, and I think they are doing everything they can to make it amazing. The deb team has obviously gone through some major over hauling this since 3.0, and while they may have let the ball drop on a couple of things (Exploitgate and Operation Victory), I certainly wouldn’t say that they are broken. We just need to have a little faith and patience with the devs. They want to give us the game we want. But we, in turn, must understand that they cannot grant every “gimme” from every player.

Well said zerne, I mean I do understand not everyone has a game to compare to but a good majority of players do. But yes, when things are good, no one says ‘hey BW great job, loving blah blah’. Good point. And thanks zerne for the comment. Really appreciate it.

Agreed on this. Players moaning about everything makes me avoid gaming fora like the plague. Sometimes they sound just so self-entitled… it makes me I feel sorry for the devs putting so much work into their game. That’s why I like blogs: they usually present a more balanced and thoughtful view on things. With the exception of the occasional ranting blog, of course, but those are in the minority.

Liu! And yes it’s been a running joke that me and few in my guild form the start or months of swtor turning on the game severs to the world. And 3 years if you been around that long you might be like me with the long list of there hit and miss with swtor. I just would love to know if there still any around on the devs from back then and if so how many have said told you I got a bad feeling about this. The Defenestrator was my old sever before the list we now have. And to think back then we had the player base to get stuff done. But like this past 4 months they say one thing and do another. I wounder if there all in the same building at times way things seam to be told then day or day’s before it to happen last min we are not going head with this at this time cause of the Op’s not 100%. They should have know this before they put the new out about the timed run stuff. And lets not forget the pack east weeks before hand said they where not going this 2nd time they backed out from a pack event. But others from Bio ware where going and why they could not still not sure as to why!

Joseph, thanks for reading my blog and I appreciate you leaving your comment. True about what you say in regards to Pax East and canceling their community cantina. One question that comes to mine is is there something that might be going on behind the scenes that we’re not seeing? A hidden objective? Some trump card? Let’s just hope that it benefits us.